What is the setting of the film 'Lifeboat'?

The setting of Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Lifeboat” is a lifeboat. The story follows survivors stranded in a single small boat after their freighter is torpedoed and sunk during World War II.

Released in 1944, the film is based on an original story by John Steinbeck and was Hitchcock’s first major “limited-setting” production. Nearly the entire drama unfolds aboard the boat, where civilians, sailors, and a German submarine captain must decide whether cooperation is possible amid hunger, injury, suspicion, and wartime hostility.

The confined setting was a deliberate creative challenge. Hitchcock used camera angles, tightly staged group scenes, and the changing condition of the survivors to create suspense without frequent changes of location. Most of the production was filmed at 20th Century Fox’s studio, with water scenes made in a large tank.

A common mix-up is confusing the setting with the film’s cause of action: the characters begin aboard a lifeboat because a freighter has been destroyed by a Nazi U-boat, but the film itself does not mainly take place on the submarine or the original ship.